A souvenir from the other New York World’s Fair

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1964 World’s Fair. There, New Yorkers were introduced to the touch tone phone, caught their first sight of the Unisphere to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and were able to view Michelangelo’s Pieta.

Amid all the nostalgia for that fair, it’s worth remembering the century’s other New York World’s Fair. The 1939 version, also in Flushing Meadows, captured the imagination of the Depression-era city.

This Art Deco souvenir matchbook features the fair’s logo: an image of the Trylon obelisk and 18-story Perisphere, the iconic, futuristic buildings that helped make the fair seem so magical.

The Queens Museum, which is housed in the former New York City building of the ’64 Fair and is directly across from the still impossing Unisphere sculpture, has a large permanent exhibit on both NY Worlds Fairs and is also a great art museum. Easy to get there by subway on the 7. exiting at the Mets-Willets Point stop.